To Start Off:

I call myself an accidental homemaker. I never had the plan to manage a home, do any household chores daily or even, for that matter, cook daily for my family. Did I even think of going to a 9-5 job daily? Not at all! All that I looked for was living for the moment. What more can you expect from a person who was never sure she would pass the annual exams and get promoted to the next class? So, there was I, unplanned and undaunted, who walked straight into the battlefield, aka kitchen, after getting married and setting up our new home at Giridih in Jharkhand.

What was special then?

Nowadays, the primary thought that runs through my mind is what to cook, pantry stock at home, and how to cook using less resources. But, back then, the only thought was to make palatable dishes. The duration of cooking and available resources was unseen, unthought-of, unprepared chapters. I cooked the whole day; okay, not exaggerating, I cooked most of the time before running off to the B.Ed College I had enrolled in, with a lunch box.

So, the question is, what special dishes did I cook then that took all of my time? I reveal to you now. At first, I used to start with tea. The induction temperature was never kept on high, as I feared the induction oven would burst up. So, the water boiled in its own sweet time, the milk boiled in its own sweet time, the rice boiled in its own sweet time, and I kept calling my two moms for recipe suggestions.

My two moms helped me a lot with different Daal tempering suggestions but never told me about the Daal-Water proportion consistency. So, some days, the Daal was watery, and some days, Daal was all Daal and no water. And salt was never on the higher side. In fact, almost all the food items cooked by me were unsalted, waiting for a taster to put a pinch of salt after a second thought. A, my husband was on the receiving end. He used to sit with the salt pot by default, just in case.

Kolkata Conversations of the Accidental Homemaker:

Our Kolkata trips involved food conversations with my two moms. They poured all the maternal love in the form of food in front of me to taste and learn a point or two. But I ended up making one mistake or the other. I was generous with water proportion in cooking. Initially, in my Giridih kitchen, I used to cook the spinach leaves, chopped cabbages, methi leaves etc., all by putting some water so when they started to give out water after getting heated (as their characters are), I had to look for bigger utensils to fit in the watery vegetables before the water dried off in their own sweet times (I had mentioned that my induction was always on a simmer).

The guide of an Accidental Homemaker:

My only saviour was the markets of Giridih where Bengali vegetables (predominantly available in the Bengal markets) were available in very few quantities. So, there were no trysts with Mochas (Banana Flowers), Thor (Banana Stems), and other seasoned ones that involved skilled chopping before cooking. Like a happy lark, I escaped the Bong kitchen ordeal by making Kadhi Chawal, Rajma Chawal, Kabuli Chana, Chana Matar and sundry that are prevalently made in the North Indian kitchens.

Chicken preparations and the quintessential Sweet Bengali Pulao were reserved for Sundays that A made with all the diligence of a Sous Chef. I used to run around helping him handing the ingredients or grinding them and he would keep stirring the spatula in the wok. I always claim that A taught me to make round Rotis and soft Paranthas and it’s true to the T. He used to explain cooking with examples, like, imagine you are rowing a boat while rolling the Roti or Parantha. The example might sound hilarious now, but that was the basic I clung to while rolling out the doughs for rotis and paranthas during the beginning days.

Cut to Circa 2020:

My happy affairs with the kitchen were put to test when my Mother-in-love accidentally fell ill, and I, the novice, had to manage the kitchen. It was like a bowler debutant’s batting after Tendulkar got retired hurt. Are you geared up to know more about it? Please wait patiently for my next blog until then……Sayonara!

The post An Accidental Homemaker – Introduction appeared first on KolkataFusion.

Mahabharata – the serial on Doordarshan

During my childhood, we didn’t have a TV in all households, forget about cable and individual entertainment devices. Doordarshan was our sole rescue. So, every Sunday, people used to flock near the windows and in the drawing room to watch Mahabharata. This was in my grandma’s house in Mugma, Jharkhand.

Kurukshetra (Dharmakshetra) war

Some scenes have refused to leave my memory even after 3 decades.

1. Bhisma, the great Pitamaha getting slain by arrows for keeping up to his valour and not fighting against a woman (even as a child, I had wondered whether he was disrespecting a woman by not fighting with her! As back then I wasn’t aware of eunuch).
2. Abhimanyu, getting trapped in Chakravyuh. I remember the entire crowd crying at his death – for being cheated by the Kauravas. As a kid, I didn’t bother to ask myself why he entered the Chakravyuh with half-baked knowledge!? If he has gained the knowledge in his mother’s womb before she fell asleep, should he have not tried to gain the full knowledge from his father when he was practising his war skills? Or he might have – but Arujana was confident of protecting his son forever.
3. Karna’s death. I still remember the man trying to pull out his chariot’s wheel when he was killed! What a silly death for a Dharmaveera.
4. In the dual, when Bhima was all haggard, the smirk on Krishna’s face and his tapping on the thigh. And then Bhima hit Duryodhana on his thighs.
5. The lie on the lips of the ever truthful, Yudhisthira and not to anyone else but his Guru (a teacher who holds one of the highest positions in our lives) – Aswathama is dead, and then he mutters an elephant. He lies to his teacher that the latter’s son has died in the war, whereas Pandavas under the guidance of Krishan had named an elephant Aswathama and killed it (after all, the lives of animals are made for sacrifices). So, Yudhisthira didn’t lie after all – Drona just fell into their trap!

Incidents leading to the Kurukshetra war

Those were the scenes from the great Mahabharata war. Some scenes are not a part of the Kurukshetra war but are crucial for this war, and I so remember them.

1. Draupadi stripped off her saree. And the white saree didn’t seem to end. Dushasana kept pulling it and pulling it, and Draupadi kept chanting Krishna’s name. And, the entire Sabha sat still, some jeering, while some hanging their heads down in shame. Roopa Ganguly’s face got engraved in my mind in that scene, with burning eyes and unkempt hair.
2. Some rishi (I can’t remember from the serial. But read that it was Indra, the father of Arjuna) came and asked Karna from Mahabharata to give away his kavach kundala and he parted with it –to keep a promise to his guru, Parshurama! He wasn’t superstitious. He believed in his cause and believed the better one, fighting a righteous war, would win.

So, why am I suddenly blabbering about Mahabharata – I’m currently reading Rise of Kali by Anand Neelakantan. And through this journey, I re-lived some of the scenes of the serial that was an integral part of my childhood. Now, coming to my hero – Karna.

Karna – the Dharmaveera, the Glorious

Who was Karna from Mahabharata?

To me – Karna was an ordinary man, disowned by his mother, unaware of his father, brought up by loving foster parents in a caste-bound society, an ambitious man with capabilities, a true friend, and a man of principle. I have not read about his wife and children. But I think he was a man who loved his wife honestly and with passion—and instilled the right principles in his children while being a caring father.

Karna as a husband & father

Yes, he had loved Draupadi, and from the book, I learnt even Draupadi loved him. But she was just a pawn in the hands of Krishna, who had to stop him from participating in her swayamvara. And he later got married to a herd of 5. Karna, of all people, should have stopped the vastraharan of Draupadi but his rage made him so blind that he faltered and did something no man should do to a woman and that too to a lady whom he loved so dearly. Why he participated in that crime – does anyone have an answer? My heart grieves to think of that Sabha!

I have hardly read anything about Karna’s children – maybe that’s because I’m not an avid reader. But I want to know how this fearless man was as a father and a husband!

Aswathama, the Brahmin son

This poor kid was a fighter well trained by his father but never got the acclamation from his father, Drona until he was alive. He was one of the closest companions of Duryodhana. He could live and die for the latter but not accept that his friend valued him after Karna. When he got to know that Karna has promised Kunti not to kill any other son of hers except Arjuna, he thought him to be a traitor. And, when Aswathama learned that Karna had given off his armour to a priest, he was furious. But, when this same man learned that Karna was Kunti’s son, he felt ashamed for doubting a man who chose death over the crown. But, would Karna’s name be related with good and equally bad if he had accepted the throne – forget about winning the admiration of many like me?

Rise of Kali – Anand Neelakantan

The war of Kurukshetra has formally ended. The Kauravas were dead, and the Pandavas was living dead.  Aswathama crawls to Suyodhana (known to us as Duryodhana), lying dead, and speaks about their friend, Karna from Mahabharata, “Suyodhana, the kingdom belonged to Karna, yet he died for you. You were right about him.”

Is everything fair in love and war?

When Karna struggled to pull out his chariot’s wheel, Arjuna, guided by Krisha, raised his bow and aimed Karna’s throat. This mostly righteous man thought Arjuna was posing, as “no warrior possessed of a modicum of honour would shoot a man like this.” He had got the same scope just a few mins back; he could have shot at Arjuna when he was weaponless. But he was following the rules of war. The rules of war? I mean, seriously – isn’t everything fair in love and war?

And to Conclude

If you have read till here, first, we would like to thank you for your patience and bearing with Neha’s random thoughts. After reading the two parts of Ajaya, her thoughts were all scattered. So many characters and all obsessed with their thoughts of Dharma and Adharma. It’s not just a fictional drama filled with whims and where anyone can be pointed out as right or wrong. It’s about us, the people taking a right and wrong actions in a particular situation. Of all the characters, she holds Karna from Mahabharata closest to her heart. And thus, this article.

Please feel free to share your views.

The post Karna from Mahabharata – the man I awe appeared first on KolkataFusion.

Come Indian summer and the winter beauties like carrots, cabbages, cauliflowers and beans go into annual hibernation. Instead, the Bengalis aka the proven gourmets, indulge in finding joy in perfectly cooked thore chhechkis (stir-fried banana stem), mochar ghontos (banana flower curry), dnata chocchoris (drumstick curry), potoler dolma (stuffed ridge gourd) and aam daal/toker daal (lentils prepared with raw mangoes). These regular preparations with commonly available vegetables comprise the Bengali Staple Dishes.

As a kid…

I had a hate-and-bearable feeling for all these preparations mentioned above. I watched Maa cleaning and chopping these vegetables, stirring them in the kadhai with her deft hands while the rice simmered in the handi placed upon another stove top burner. A warm, magical aroma hovered in the kitchen as the cooking went on. As a naïve child, I tried to differentiate the aroma – this one’s coming from the boiling rice, that one’s coming from that obnoxious dumoor er dalna (fig curry), the other one might be from the frying onions and so on.

Now, I know that aroma was only of the love that cooked the food. But, no matter how the aroma was, whenever Ma served the dnata chocchoris, I wanted to abandon my plate and run to the backyard. The sole cause was that I hated chewing the drumsticks or pumpkin stems. My parents grew most of these vegetables, specially dumoor, sojne dnata, kumro shaak (pumpkin plant), lau shaak (gourd plant), in the small kitchen garden adjacent to our quarters. The pumpkin or gourd creepers never yielded fruits except for ample leaves and stems for Ma to use in her cooking.

Dida and her magic with the Bengali Staple Dishes

Dida, my maternal grandmother, was an excellent cook. I never got a chance to taste her fish or meat preparations because she turned vegetarian after Boro Dadu, my grandfather, died. I was then just a 5-year-old kid. Her shuktos and kalmi shaaks and paat shaker jhols were simply out of this world. I remember staying with Dida for a few weeks after my ICSE Exams and immersing in those delectable Bengali vegetarian dishes for that entire span.
During that stay, I helped myself with a humble breakfast of Dudh-Muri-Kola or Chire-Doi daily before climbing upstairs to the rooftop room to read the yellow paged storybooks till Dida called me for lunch. As I would re-shuffle the bookshelf to pick up exciting titles, the whiffs of Radhuni seeds (Wild celery seeds) would entertain my olfactory senses. Dida used Radhuni spices to temper Daals and Shuktos that she cooked often. The boiling rice smelt different from that of our house. Maybe, the underground water collected from the garden tubewell did all the magic. Or perhaps it was because of the cook’s love potion difference.
However, as I recollect, I realize that my Dida and Ma were true minimalist cooks. They cooked their versions of Bengali Staple Dishes with a few ingredients, optimum oil and optimum water – nothing more, nothing less. I guess it’s the same with all our previous generation mothers, aunts and grandmothers. They knew how to create delicious meals with significantly fewer ingredients.

Things changed during Adulting 1.0

As I grew and went out of Bengal, I started loving the same vegetables I did not love before. I was pretty disgusted with the varieties of cereals and pulses we could buy there. The scarcity of ‘Bengali’ vegetables irked me every time. Even if I caught sights of Mocha (banana flowers), or Thore (banana stems), I didn’t know how to clean, chop and cook them back then. The memories of the afternoons when we would help ourselves with the mochar ghonto (banana flower curry with lentil fritters) or dumurer dalna or thore chhechkis (stir fried banana stems tempered with mustard seeds) kept coming back in my mind. I longed to go back home. Therefore, I used to look forward to our weekly/fortnightly Kolkata visits when my mother-in-love (mother-in-law), would prepare the traditional food in ample quantities for us to devour. She packed ready-to-eat dhoka bhajas or chhanar koftas whenever we returned to that god-forsaken Jharkhand town.

My mornings used to start calling either of my two mothers on the instant recipes they would share as saviours. At the same time, our sole ray of hope of eating good food rested on the occasional paranthas, chilli chickens and weekly pulaos that Avik cooked. I don’t even want to think what would have happened if Avik didn’t know how to cook.

Then COVID came – Adulting 2.0 and foraying into the world of cooking Bengali staple dishes

Suggested Read: Our journey towards new normal after covid-19 pandemic.

During the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic, life somewhat compelled me to learn the ropes of traditional Bengali cooking from my mother-in-love. She made me realize that cooking is a basic life skill and we must know to cook at least a few simple dishes to survive hunger pangs. Yet, I wasn’t truly interested until she fell ill once. However, we were also not interested in investing in a cook because no cook could replicate the taste of her cooked dishes. Like, how to perfectly instruct an outsider to cook a basic dish like Alu Morich with no temperings except a dash of ghee and ‘as-you-feel-like’ pepper powder sprinkled just before serving?

Thus, I took the stride. Every day, I would sit by her side and take diligent instructions on cooking, what to cook and the basic tricks. Over a year, as she recuperated, I kept improving myself on the cooking front and practicing minimalism – less oil, less water, less cooking gas. Gradually, I developed a love for cooking. I tried my hand with the traditional shil nora (grinding stones) when the mixer became defunct in the middle of cooking lunch. By then I learnt that preparing non-veg dishes are one of the easiest jobs in this planet! It’s that perfectly-flavoured and balanced shukto or knacha mooger daal that tests your mastery of cooking! I feel amazed nowadays with my ability to retain the memories of the flavours of the food my mother cooked. Perhaps, that’s what we call – ‘mukhe lege thaka.’

And now…

I am fortunate to cook with my mother-in-love nowadays and to watch her closely while she uses simple cooking tricks. And the one spice that she, too, uses profusely in her meals – is love. It’s indeed a magical experience to sprinkle generous doses of love in your food while cooking and it cannot be taught until you start using it yourselves.

The post An ode to the Thore Chhechkis and Dnata chocchoris – Bengali Staple Dishes appeared first on KolkataFusion.